


Below the Waters, in a Blue-Green World

by westgirl



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mermaid, First Time, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-13
Updated: 2011-04-13
Packaged: 2017-10-18 00:39:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/183081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westgirl/pseuds/westgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It turns out that Steve is a merman. This is not the most ridiculous part of Danny’s day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Below the Waters, in a Blue-Green World

“There is no way I am walking the plank. That is just not going to happen.”

The men with machine guns looked like they hadn’t expected to receive complaints about their chosen method of execution.

“We have the guns, cop,” said the pirate, and hoisted his gun for effect. “And we say that you walk the plank.”

“No. No way. If I am going to die, it will not be in a humorous way. I am not going to be the butt of some punning newspaper headline. My death is not going to be the basis of a late-night sketch comedy routine.”

Danny felt he was in a position to negotiate, because he was pretty sure that either way he and Steve were dead.

The drug runners had surprised them at a remote jetty, knocking them both unconscious, throwing their cell phones into the water, and then driving out in the boat for at least two hours before telling them to jump. Apparently, this way no one would be able to get evidence off their drowned corpses that would link them to the drug runners. No bullets for ballistics, no knife wounds to match to the weapon that caused them. Just two lungs full of water. If their bodies were ever found at all.

So, bearing in mind his almost certain death, Danny felt he might as well annoy them into shooting him. He wanted his horrible death to be like something off The Wire, with pathos, not something off an episode of Spongebob Squarepants. Which pretty much ruled out walking the plank, and why the fuck had he thought of Spongebob Squarepants, because now he was thinking about how much he really didn’t want to die.

Next to him, Steve was glaring darkly at their captors, probably trying to work out how many of them he could kill before they shot him.

“Look, this is not The Pirates of the Caribbean. You’re going to have to shoot me, like normal twenty-first century criminals,” said Danny, resolute. He looked over at Steve, because this was usually the sort of thing he talked Steve out of doing, Steve should be loving this, but instead he had a strange look on his face, as if he were fighting some profound inner battle.

“What? What is that look?” Danny asked. “We’re in the middle of something,” he gestured to the drug smugglers. “Why have you got that look?”

“Do you trust me?” Steve asked.

“Of course I trust you, what’s that got to do with anything?”

“Walk the plank,” Steve said, with that intense look he had when he was trying to beam a plan directly into Danny’s brain.

“In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got to be at least 100 miles into open ocean. It is deep and cold and dark down there Steven, and no one knows we are here. I am sure you have incredible ninja SEAL ocean survival skills, but if we go in there, we are not coming out.”

Steve kept giving him the look.

Danny sighed. He was going to walk the plank.

“If I get eaten by a giant squid, when I could have died quick by being shot, I am blaming you.”

Steve grinned, as if they weren’t about to swim until they couldn’t swim any more and then sink down to their death.

“Stay close,” he instructed.

“As if there’s anywhere else for me to go,” Danny muttered. Steve took his hand, and they jumped.

The water was cold, this far out, and the waves that had seemed surmountable in the boat were now throwing them around like driftwood. Danny panicked for a moment, tried to grab the smooth sides of the boat, but Steve took his arms, held him till he was calm, keeping them both afloat.

“So what now?” Danny asked, when he could talk again without screaming.

“We wait for them to leave.” Steve said, with his arms still wrapped around Danny.

“How is that helpful? How is it helpful to expend energy treading water until the bad guys have made their exit, when surely we should be striking out on our futile attempt to swim back to any sort of land?”

“You could save energy by not talking,” suggested Steve, but he didn’t seem to mind too much when Danny kept muttering about death and stupid plans and what sort of modern water craft has a plank, anyway?

Eventually, the drug runners peered over the edge, smirked down at them, made a couple of insinuations about their closeness, and sped off.

Steve stared after them until they were just a pinprick on the horizon. He looked back to Danny, who was now treading water a couple of feet away, still holding onto him with one hand.

Danny studied the expression on Steve’s face. A rare one, but one he’d seen before nevertheless. Although he had no idea why Steve had his ‘I hope you accept my gift of tickets to the Dolphin Hotel face’ on in this situation.

“So what’s the plan?” he asked impatiently, Steve’s nerves making him nervous.

Steve licked his lips. “You trust me Danny? You’ve got my back?” He asked it so seriously that Danny couldn’t help his response. Even if this was the last wet miserable hour of his life, he had no defence against Steve’s vulnerabilities.

“Yeah I’ve got your back you big goof. Do your thing,” he raised one hand (already slightly blue) from the water to make a ‘go for it’ gesture.

Steve smiled a strange little smile, as if he was anticipating something fun like a trip to the arcade, and then he ducked beneath the water.

After a long moment alone on the surface, Danny put some serious consideration into panicking again. But he felt that, seeing how long Steve could no doubt hold his breath, he should give it a good couple of minutes before taking that route.

Just then, he felt movement in the water and Steve appeared again. Shirtless.

“That’s your plan. Taking off your shirt in freezing water? How is that helpful? There are no girls around her to admire your manly physique…” and Danny really would have gone on, if he hadn’t noticed that the movement of water coming from Steve’s part of the ocean was no longer the churning of two legs treading water. He peered down into the dark, and saw a tail.

Not so much The Pirates of the Caribbean as The Little Mermaid, Danny thought hysterically.

Steve was looking hesitant, biting his lip a bit as if Danny might yell at him. Danny did plan to yell at him, but later. It could keep.

“So, you’re a mermaid.” Having to say that phrase didn’t make Danny’s impending death any more dignified.

Steve shrugged, “A merman.”

“I am going to set aside, for the moment, that you are mermaid,”

“Merman”

“Mer-whatever. You have not told me about his fact, this fact that is vital to who you are. An omission that violates everything that is sacred about our partnership. But, setting that aside, how is the fact that you are a merman,” using the correct term didn’t make it less weird, “going to help us get 100 miles back to land?”

“I can live underwater,” said Steve.

Apparently being in his natural habitat didn’t make Steve a better communicator.

Danny took a calming breath. “That’s great. I can’t. And somehow I don’t think you’re going to be able to tow me all the way back.”

“Do you trust me?” asked Steve again.

Danny was getting really sick of that question. “Yes, I trust you, okay? Do not ask me again, Steven. I will take it as an insult if you ask me again.”

Steve looked sulky. “Well, what you said about partnership. And I’m a merman. I thought you might not trust me any more.”

Danny clipped him across the back of the head and glared at him. Steve broke out into a bashful grin.

Bizarrely, the normalcy of Steve’s expression made Danny feel better. Seeing as Steve didn’t seem to be about to do something useful like expand upon his plan for saving their lives, Danny decided to treat himself to a rant. “Of course I still trust you, you moron. I’m angry at you, furious even, but that doesn’t mean –”

Steve kissed him, and then pulled him under the water.

Steve pulled him down further, until the surface was nothing but a faraway discolouration.

Everything was dark. The whole ocean seemed to be pressing on Danny’s chest, crushing him until his last desperate breath was forced out of his body.

And then everything was illuminated. The surface seemed washed out, while the dark ocean underworld was lit up with life and spectacular colour. Danny breathed easily, as easily as his arms were now sliding through the suddenly warm water.

In front of him Steve was hovering, his muscled torso leading down to a powerful tail, slick like a seal’s, rather than scaly.

Danny was frequently impressed by Steve – by his intelligence, his physical prowess. Not that he’d ever tell Steve that. But he had never been more impressed that at that moment, where Steve looked perfectly put together, swimming like he was built to do exactly that.

Danny wanted to ask Steve what the hell was going on. So he did, even though Steve wouldn’t be able to hear him in the water. But then he found himself speaking, as if they were sitting on the beach having this conversation, not fifty feet under the heaving Pacific Ocean.

Steve looked hesitant. “You’re not angry?”

Danny used his reasonable voice. “Of course I’m angry. I’m always angry, and you dragging me down into the ocean without any explanation is currently in the top ten list of things that I am angry about. But I will be less angry if you explain what the hell you just did.”

“We can give humans gifts. Some of my people had human mates, who they took to live with them in the sea.”

Danny checked to see if he had a tail.

Steve caught his downward glance and explained, “You’re still human. I can’t change that. I’ve just given you what you need to live down here.”

Danny’s heart stopped beating in his chest. “What do you mean ‘live down here’? McGarrett, if you have made it so that I can only stare at my daughter from a distance while she plays on the beach, so help me…” Danny trailed off, unable to put into words the horrible, horrible things he would do to Steve.

Steve looked hurt. The rational part of Danny’s brain, which always operated a few seconds behind the ‘parent’ part of Danny’s brain, remembered that Steve had always put Grace first.

Before he could apologise, Steve was speaking in a clipped tone. “You’ll be like me. You can live on land or in the sea. You only have to be down here for as long as it takes us to get back to shore. We’ll tell people I did some ninja SEAL thing, and you’ll never have to think about it again.” Steve’s face was closed-up, thousand-yard-stare, no emotions to see here, move along.

Danny took his hand.

Steve had been so happy before he’d ducked down to change. It wasn’t the change itself (because Danny was now pretty sure that Steve’s morning marathon swim didn’t involve legs). It had been sharing it with Danny.

He held on, waiting until he had Steve’s attention. Then he let a slow smile spread across his face. “That’s just rude. You say you’ve given me a gift, a present, and before I’ve even taken it out of the box, you’re telling me what I should do with it? I need to buy you an etiquette book, babe.”

Steve grinned. A small shoal of fish darted around them.

Danny licked his lips and said, “I am going to have a huge freak out later. And then we are going to have a long talk about what this all means, which we could have had months ago if you were less emotionally stunted. But for the moment, I am going to focus on the fact that this is a gift your people apparently share with their mates. A gift that you gave me with a kiss.”

Danny smiled at the simple, uncomplicated happiness writ large in every line of Steve’s body.

“I can give it to someone another way.” Steve said, eyes bright with excitement, “I could kiss Grace on the forehead.”

Danny’s imagination provided an image of Grace playing under the sea, swimming side by side with dolphins, unencumbered by a wetsuit or the need to breathe air.

And suddenly he didn’t care that he was under the ocean, or that his partner wasn’t human, or that his day had involved the phrase ‘walk the plank’. He surged forward into Steve’s arms, kissing lips that were slick and soft with water. Feeling exploded into Danny’s senses, the transformation as dazzling as the revelation of the bright undersea world.

Eventually Steve pulled back, serious, “We need to get back. The longer we’re gone, the more they’ll worry, and the more of a lead our drug runners will get.”

Danny grinned, “They’re going to be surprised to see us again.”

Steve laughed and suddenly rolled away through the water, tail slicing powerfully as he twisted in a graceful circle around Danny. Glancing back to make sure Danny was moving as well, Steve began to swim in the direction the boat had gone.

Danny did what now came naturally (and perhaps always had, right from the start). He followed his mate into the thrilling unknown.

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the Cornish story of the mermaid Morveren and the man Matthew who ran away to live with her in the sea. The title of my story is from the version of this folktale at the Cornish Connexions website.
> 
> Cornish folktales speak of mermaids often having good relationships with humans, rather than being deadly temptresses. There is also a tradition that mermaids could give humans gifts, which were passed down though generations of a family.


End file.
